Reading Made Easy for Foreigners - Third Reader eBook

1. O Columbia, the gem of the ocean,
The home of the brave
and the free,
The shrine of each patriot’s
devotion,
A world offers homage
to thee.
Thy mandates make heroes assemble,
When Liberty’s
form stands in view,
Thy banners make tyranny tremble,
When borne by the red, white
and blue.

CHORUS.

When borne by the red, white and blue,
When borne by the red, white and blue,
Thy banners make tyranny tremble,
When borne by the red, white and blue.

2. When war winged its wide desolation.
And threatened the land
to deform,
The ark then of freedom’s
foundation,
Columbia, rode safe
thro’ the storm;
With her garlands of vict’ry
around her,
When so proudly she
bore her brave crew,
With her flag proudly floating before
her,
The boast of the red,
white and blue.

CHORUS.

3. The wine-cup, the wine-cup bring hither,
And fill you it true
to the brim;
May the wreaths they have won never
wither,
Nor the star of their
glory grow dim.
May the service united ne’er
sever,
But they to their colors
prove true.
The Army and Navy forever,
Three cheers for the
red, white and blue.

CHORUS.

David T. Shaw.

LESSON LXII

LOVE FOR THE DEAD

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which
we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound
we seek to heal—­every other affliction to
forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep
open—­this affliction we cherish and brood
over in solitude. Where is the mother who would
willingly forget the infant that perished like a blossom
from her arms, though every recollection is a pang?
Where is the child that would willingly forget the
most tender of parents, though to remember be but
to lament? Who, even in the hour of agony, would
forget the friend over whom he mourns? Who,
even when the tomb is closing upon the remains of
her he most loved—­when he feels his heart,
as it were, crushed in the closing of its portal—­would
accept of consolation that must be bought by forgetfulness?

No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the
noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its
woes, it has likewise its delights; and when the overwhelming
burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection—­when
the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the
present ruins of all that we most loved is softened
away into pensive meditation on all that it was in
the days of its loveliness—­who would root
out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may
sometimes throw a passing cloud over the bright hour
of gayety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour
of gloom, yet who would exchange it, even for the